The 1st Deadly Sin (4 page)

She raised her eyes to look directly at Daniel Blank. He was startled. He had been so engrossed with her lecture, so intent on following her thought, that he had no clear idea of what she looked like. Now, as Florence Morton hastily introduced them, as he crossed the room to take Celia Montfort’s proffered hand, he inspected her closely.

She sat curled up in the softness of a big armchair that was all foam, red velvet and cigarette burns. Strangely, for a Sunday morning, she was wearing an elegant evening shift of black satin. The neckline was straight across, the dress suspended from bare shoulders by “spaghetti straps.” She wore a thin choker of diamonds, and on the wrist of the hand she held out to Blank was a matching bracelet. He wondered if perhaps she had been to an all-night party and had been unable to go home to change. He thought so when he saw the silk evening slippers.

Her hair was so black it was almost purple, parted in the middle, and fell loosely below her shoulders without wave or curl. It gave her thin face a witch-like appearance, enhanced by long, slender hands, tapering fingers with stiletto nails.

Her bare arms, shoulders, the tops of her small breasts revealed by the low-cut gown: all gleamed against the red velvet. There was a peculiar, limpid
nakedness
to her flesh. The arms were particularly sensual: smooth, hairless, as seemingly boneless as tentacles: arms squeezed from tubes.

It was difficult to estimate her height or appreciate her figure while she was coiled into the armchair. Blank judged her a tall woman, perhaps five foot six or more, with a good waist, flat hips, hard thighs. But at the moment all that was of little importance to him; her face bewitched him, her eyes locked with his.

They were grey eyes, or were they a light blue? Her thin brows were arched, or were they straight? Her nose was—what? An Egyptian nose? A nose from a sarcophagus or bas-relief? And those parted lips: were they full and dry, or flat and moist? The long chin, like the toe of her silk slipper—was that enchanting or perhaps too masculine? As Sam Morton had said, not beautiful. But something there. Something better? It needed study.

He had the impression that at this time, noon on a bright Sunday, wearing Saturday night’s stale finery, her face and body were smudged with weariness. There was a languor in her posture, her skin was pallid, and faint violet shadows were beneath her eyes. She had the scent of debauchery, and her toneless voice came from senses punished beyond feeling and passions spent.

Florence and Samuel immediately launched into a violent denunciation of her “Black is beautiful” comments. Daniel watched to see how she reacted to this assault. He saw at once she had the gift of repose: no twistings there, no squirmings, no fiddling with bracelet, fluffing hair, touching ears. She sat quietly, composed, and Daniel suddenly realized she was not listening to her critics. She was withdrawn from all of them.

She was gone but not, he guessed, day-dreaming. She was not floating; she had pulled back within herself, sinking deeper into her own thoughts, hungers, hopes. Those eyes, indecipherable as water, attended them, but he had a sense of her estrangement. He wanted to be in her country, if only for a visit, to look around and see what the place was like.

Flo paused for an answer to a question. But there was no answer. Celia Montfort merely regarded her with a somewhat glassy stare, her face expressionless. The moment was saved by the entrance of Blanche, pushing a big-three-shelved cart laden with hot and cold dishes, a pitcher of Bloody Marys, an iced bottle of sparkling rose.

The food was less unconventional than Blank had hoped, but still the poached eggs were sherried, the ham was in burgundy sauce, the mushroom omelette brandied, the walnut waffles swimming in rum-flavored maple syrup.

“Eat!” commanded Flo.

“Enjoy!” commanded Sam.

Daniel had a single poached egg, a strip of bacon, a glass of wine. Then he settled back with a bunch of chilled Concord grapes, listening to the Mortons’ chatter, watching Celia Montfort silently and intently devour an immense amount of food.

Afterward they had small, warmed Portuguese brandies. Daniel and the Mortons carried on a desultory conversation about Art Deco, a current fad. Celia’s opinion was asked, but she shook her head. “I know nothing about it.” After that she sat quietly, brandy glass clasped in both hands, eyes brooding. She had no talent for small talk. Complain of bad weather and she might, he thought, deliver you a sermon on humility. Strange woman. What was it Sam had said—“She scares you.” Why on earth should he have said that—unless he was referring to her disturbing silences, her alienation: which might be nothing more than egoism and bad manners.

She rose suddenly to her feet and, for the first time, Blank saw her body clearly. As he had guessed, she was tall, but thinner and harder than he had suspected. She carried herself well, moved with a sinuous grace, and her infrequent gestures were small and controlled.

She said she must go, giving Flo and Sam a bleak smile. She thanked them politely for their hospitality. Flo brought her coat: a cape of weighted silk brocade, as dazzling as a matador’s jacket. Blank was now convinced she had not been home to that East End Avenue townhouse since Saturday evening, nor slept at all the previous night.

She moved to the door. Flo and Sam looked at him expectantly.

“May I see you home?” he asked.

She looked at him thoughtfully.

“Yes,” she said finally. “You may.”

The Mortons exchanged a rapid glance of triumph. They waited in the hallway, in their studded jumpsuits, grinning like idiots, until the elevator door shut them away.

In the elevator, unexpectedly, she asked: “You live in this building, don’t you?”

“Yes. The twenty-first floor.”

“Let’s go there.”

Ten minutes later she was in his bedroom, brocaded cape dropped to the floor, and fast asleep atop the covers of his bed, fully clothed. He picked up her cape, hung it away, slipped off her shoes and placed them neatly alongside the bed. Then he closed the door softly, went back into the living room to read the Sunday New York
Times
, and tried not to think of the strange woman sleeping in his bed.

At 4:30, finished with his paper, he looked in upon her. She was lying face up on the pillows, her great mass of black hair fanned out. He was stirred. From the shoulders down she had turned onto her side and slept holding her bare arms. He took a light wool blanket from the linen closet and covered her gently. Then he went into the kitchen to eat a peeled apple and swallow a yeast tablet.

An hour later he was seated in the dim living room, trying to recall her features and understand why he was so intrigued by her sufficiency. The look of the sorceress, the mysterious wizard, could be due, he decided, to the way she wore her long, straight hair and the fact, as he suddenly realized, that she wore no make-up at all: no powder, no lipstick, no eyeshadow. Her face was naked.

He heard her moving about. The bathroom door closed; the toilet was flushed. He switched on lamps. When she came into the living room he noted that she had put on her shoes and combed her hair smooth.

“Don’t you ever wear any make-up?” he asked her.

She stared at him a long moment.

“Occasionally I rouge my nipples.”

He gave her a sardonic smile. “Isn’t that in poor taste?”

She caught his lewd meaning at once. “Witty man,” she said in her toneless voice. “Might I have a vodka? Straight. Lots of ice, please. And a wedge of lime, if you have it.” When he came back with identical drinks for both, she was curled up on his Tobia Scarpa sofa, her face softly illuminated by a Marc Lepage inflatable lamp. He saw at once her weariness had vanished with sleep; she was serene. But with a shock he saw something he had not noticed before: a fist-sized bruise on the bicep of her left arm: purple and angry.

She took the drink from his hand. Her fingers were cool, bloodless as plastic.

“I like your apartment,” she said.

Under the terms of the separation agreement, Gilda Blank had taken most of the antiques, the overstuffed furniture, the velvet drapes, the shag rugs. Daniel was happy to see it all go. The apartment had come to stiffle him. He felt muffled by all that carved wood and heavy cloth: soft things that burdened, then swaddled him.

He had redecorated the almost empty apartment in severe modern, most of the things from Knoll. There was chrome and glass, black leather and plastic, stainless steel and white enamel. The apartment was now open, airy, almost spidery in its delicacy. He kept furniture to a minimum, leaving the good proportions of the living room to make their own statement. The mirrored wall was cluttered wit, but otherwise the room was clean, precise, and exalting as a museum gallery.

“A room like this proves you don’t require roofs,” she told him. “You have destroyed the past by ignoring it. Most people have a need for history, to live in a setting that constantly reminds of past generations. They take comfort and meaning from feeling themselves part of the flow, what was, is, will be. I think that is a weak, shameful emotion. It takes strength to break free, forget the past and deny the future. That’s what this room does. Here you can exist by yourself in yourself, with no crutches. The room is without sentiment. Are you without sentiment?”

“Oh,” he said, “I don’t think so. Without emotion perhaps. Is your apartment in modern? As austere as this?”

“It is not an apartment. It’s a townhouse. It belongs to my parents.”

“Ah. They are still living then?”

“Yes,” she said. “They are still living.”

“I understand you live with your brother.”

“His name is Anthony. Tony. He’s twenty years younger than I. Mother had him late in life. It was an embarrassment to her. She and my father prefer him to live with me.”

“And where do they live?”

“Oh, here and there,” she said vaguely. “There is one thing I don’t like about this room.”

“What is that?”

She pointed to a black cast iron candelabrum with twelve contorted arms. Fitted to each was a white taper.

“I don’t like unburned candles,” she said tonelessly. “They seem to me as dishonest as plastic flowers and wallpaper printed to look like brick.”

“Easily remedied,” he said, rose and slowly lighted the candles.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s better.”

“Are you ready for another drink?”

“Bring the vodka and a bucket of ice out here. Then you won’t have to run back and forth.”

“Yes,” he said, “I will.”

When he returned, she had snuffed three of the tapers. She added ice and vodka to her glass.

“We’ll snuff them at intervals. So they will be in various lengths. I’m glad you have the dripless kind. I like candles, but I don’t like leavings of dead wax.”

“Memories of past pleasures?”

“Something like that. But also too reminiscent of bad Italian restaurants with candles in empty Chianti bottles and too much powdered garlic in the sauce. I hate fakery. Rhinestones and padded brassieres.”

“My wife—” he started. “My ex-wife—” he amended, “wore a padded bra. The strange thing was that she didn’t need it. She was very well endowed. Is.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Gilda? A very pleasant woman. We’re both from Indiana. We met at the University. A blind date. I was a year ahead of her. We went together occasionally. Nothing serious. I came to New York. Then she came here, a year later, and we started seeing each other again. Serious, this time.”

“What was she like? Physically, I mean.”

“A large woman, with a tendency to put on weight. She loved rich food. Her mother is enormous. Gilda is blonde. What you’d call a ‘handsome woman.’ A good athlete. Swimming, tennis, golf, skiing—all that. Very active in charities, social organizations. Took lessons in bridge. Chinese cooking, and music appreciation. Things like that.”

“No children?”

“No.”

“How long were you married?”

“Ahh…He stared at her. “My God, I can’t remember. Of course. Seven years. Almost eight. Yes, that’s right. Almost eight years.”

“You didn’t want children?”

“I didn’t—no.”

“She?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you divorced?”

“Oh no. No, that had nothing to do with it. We divorced because—well, why did we divorce? Incompatibility, I guess. We just grew apart. She went her way and I went mine.”

“What was her way?”

“You’re very personal.”

“Yes. You can always refuse to answer.”

“Well, Gilda is a very healthy, well-adjusted, out-going woman. She likes people, likes children, parties, picnics, the theatre, church. Whenever we went to the theatre or a movie where the audience was asked to sing along with the entertainer or music, she would sing along. That’s the kind of woman she was.”

“A sing-alonger with a padded brassiere.”

“And plastic flowers,” he added. “Well, not plastic. But she did buy a dozen roses made of silk. I couldn’t convince her they were wrong.”

He rose to blow out another three candles. He came back to sit in his Eames chair. Suddenly she came over to sit on the hassock in front of him. She put a light hand on his knee. “What happened?” she whispered.

“You guessed?” he said, not surprised. “A strange story. I don’t understand it myself.”

“Have you told the Mortons?”

“My God, no. I’ve told no one.”

“But you want to tell me.”

“Yes I want to tell you. And I want you to explain it to me. Well, Gilda is a normal, healthy woman who enjoys sex. I do too. Our sex was very good. It really was. At the start anyway. But you know, you get older and it doesn’t seem so important. To her, anyway. But I don’t mean to put her down. She was good and enthusiastic in bed. Perhaps unimaginative. Sometimes she’d laugh at me. But a normal, healthy woman.”

“You keep saying healthy, healthy, healthy.”

“Well, she was. Is. A big, healthy woman. Big legs. Big breasts. A glow to her skin. Rubens would have loved her. Well…about three years ago we took a summer place for the season on Barnegat Bay. You know where that is?”

“No.”

“The Jersey shore. South of Bay Head. It was beautiful. Fine beach, white sand, not too crowded. One afternoon we had some neighbors over for a cook-out. We all had a lot to drink. It was fun. We were all in bathing suits, and we’d drink, get a little buzz on, and then go into the ocean to swim and sober up, and then eat and drink some more. It was a wonderful afternoon. Eventually everyone went home. Gilda and I were alone. Maybe a little drunk, hot from the sun and food and laughing. We went back into our cottage and decided to have sex. So we took off our bathing suits. But we kept our sunglasses on.”